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GM carotene-enhanced bananas

March 2015

In August 2014, a touch of déjà vu
led GM-free Scotland to comment that "the safety and efficacy
questions (of golden GM bananas) are going to be by-passed in favour
of ignoring scientific ethics and hyping the product, as it seems to
be the case with golden rice" [1].

The excuse for copying a gene from one
banana into another is that, apparently, "Residents of Uganda
and nearby countries don't favour the type of sweet banana that
naturally carries the extra beta-carotene. So researchers put the
gene into a less-sweet type of banana that East Africans often use in
cooking".

Like golden rice, golden bananas are
designed to provide beta-carotene which the body converts to vitamin
A. Like golden rice, the GM bananas are planned to target poor,
malnourished populations. Like golden rice, the GM bananas have not
been safety tested on animals, will not go through clinical trials,
and are going to be fed to a small number of well-nourished healthy
individuals (this time female American university students) to
measure how much vitamin A is produced.

Unlike golden rice, the US researchers
are trying to avoid the ethics scandal which broke over the
surreptitious feeding of experimental GM rice to Chinese children.

Dr Wendy White and her team have
ensured that their proposed materials and methods have approval from
the Institutional Review Board Office of Responsible Research.
However, the 'Level of Risk' and 'Rationale' behind their protocol is
"this study presents minimal risk because the FDA (Food and Drug
Administration) has deemed other genetically modified food as safe,
and as such the general population is already consuming many
genetically modified foods on a daily basis."

How convincing is this 'risk'
assessment? Neither the approval of 'Bt' insecticidal GM maize nor
herbicide-tolerant GM soya, nor the unmonitored consumption of both
by the public would seem to have any relevance to a
carotene-containing GM banana. The possibility of harmful
carotene-related by-products or derivatives is nowhere, and the only
risk identified is from the insertion of a syringe needle by a
trained phlebotamist for taking blood samples.

Having dispensed with any
considerations of health risks, Dr White's team turned its attention
to the surrounding media coverage and a perceived risk that
participants in the trial might become unduly alarmed or upset by it.
However, the banana-eaters are to receive a reassuring information
sheet telling them about the US FDA's 1992 policy that GM
crops are "usually the same" as conventional equivalents,
plus a comment from the ILSI (International Life Science Institute, a
food industry lobby group) that novel toxins from a GMO are
'implausible', plus a 1991 statement by the WHO (World Health
Organisation) that GM foods are not inherently less safe than
conventional foods.

All of these statements are misleading,
none are based on science, and actually the WHO says something rather
different (see below.)

More interesting is the so-called
'news' coverage that spawned all this concern about media effects on
participants in the first place.

In June 2014, we were told that 10
kilograms of GM bananas (that's about 70 unpeeled bananas) had
been shipped from Australia (where they were developed and grown) to
the US university where they were to be tested on humans. Project
leader Professor James Dale said previous US trials using Mongoloan
gerbils had already proved successful on the bananas .

(Note. Gerbils are a good animal
model for human absorption and metabolism of carotene).

There's no sign of this previous trial
in the scientific literature, unless Prof Dale is referring to a
study he co-authored and published in 2012 which fed traditional
high carotene bananas to gerbils.

In July 2014, we were told that bunches
of GM bananas had arrived frozen in the US and volunteers were
earning $900 apiece by eating the experimental food and giving blood
samples. Prof. Dale had his public sedation speech all ready: "We
know the ultimate compound, beta-carotene, that's not toxic, the gene
comes out of bananas, that can't be toxic, people have been eating
that for thousands of years".

August 2014 brought the news that over
500 women were dying to eat a GM banana (in return for $900) but that
only twelve were getting that privilege. What the lucky twelve were
to be fed was the equivalent of a banana (presumably the 10
kilograms of GM bananas were to be combined into a standardised dose,
although why 10 kilos were needed to provide twelve
banana-equivalents isn't obvious). Dr White got busy with her PR
speech: "Wouldn't it be great if these bananas could prevent
preschool kids from dying from diarrhoea, malaria or measles?",
and took the public-sedation opportunity to mention that she had led
a similar study a few years ago, with six women eating porridge made
from corn that was altered (by conventional breeding, but she
missed that bit out) to produce high levels of beta-carotene.

In November 2014, The Ecologist pointed
out that the carotene-producing gene claimed by Dr. Dale to have been
copied from a 'wild' banana actually came from a domesticated red
banana cultivar, first noted in 1788 and developed over the centuries
by indigenous farmers across Asia, Indonesia and the Pacific, where
it is still popular. The gene is the rightful property of the
nations and communities that developed it and its use by biotech
engineers is a clear case of bio-piracy.

In December 2014, the AFSA (Alliance
for Food Sovereignty in Africa) write to Dr. White and the Gates
Foundation which has contributed $15 million to develop the 'super'
bananas, denouncing the project because "These crops divert
resources away from more locally appropriate and controlled
agricultural solutions to nutritional concerns". It also
spelled out the need for a diversified diet in areas where
people suffer vitamin A deficiency, not the perpetuation of
"monolithic diets". The AFSA demanded its letter be shared
with the human subjects of the US trial.

Ugandan AFSA Policy Advocate, Bridget
Mugambe, said

"we have been eating homegrown GM-free bananas for
centuries. This GM banana is an insult to our food, to our culture,
to us as a nation, and we strongly condemn it".

In January 2015, the golden banana
project suddenly lost its shine.

Despite the press 'reports', the
feeding trial had never actually reached the starting post. Further
information about the GM bananas continued to filter into the media,
but became so patchy it made little sense.

The US university didn't know why, but
rumour had it that there were shipping 'issues'. Prof. Dale
indicated the banana 'material' was substandard and that shipping
bananas from Australia to the US in good condition was a 'challenge'.

(Strange. Fresh or frozen, moving
bananas around the globe is something we've been rather good at for
decades.)

More tellingly, it is hoped that the
trial will now go ahead by the middle of 2015.

(Is Dr. Dale having to wait for the
next crop of GM bananas to be harvested? If so, it suggests they're
not growing too well.)

On the subject of why ship the GM
bananas half-way round the world in the first place, it seems
Australia has no independent laboratory available to do the work.

(How onerous can a few vitamin A
analyses be?)

Last but not least, back in July 2014,
National Public Radio (NPR) pointed out the many regulatory and
practical hurdles the GM fruit would have to jump. "For the
banana to have any impact at all, governments would have to approve
it, farmers would have to grow it, the ordinary people would have to
be persuaded to eat orange-tinted bananas".

(Golden rice fell at all of these
hurdles and has never got off the ground. What hope golden bananas?)

OUR COMMENT

To summarise:

Someone's putting out an
incredible number of incorrect press-releases.

The scientists are paying
lip-service to ethics, lots of attention to PR, and no attention to
safety.

Vitamin A is highly biologically active
in trace quantities and has multiple physiological functions (some of
which we may not know about). Beta-carotene isn't toxic, but it's
closely related to substances which are toxic. As US neurobiologist
Dave Schubert put it " ... It's hard to predict how a gene from
one plant will affect another plant. Plants can be really weird".

Different GM organisms include different
genes inserted in different ways. This means that individual GM
foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and
that it is not possible to make general statements on the safety
of all GM foods.

GM foods currently available on the
international market have passed safety assessments and are not
likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on
human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such
foods by the general population in the countries where they have been
approved. Continuous application of safety assessments based on the
Codex Alimentarius principles and, where appropriate, adequate post
market monitoring, should form the basis for ensuring the safety of
GM foods.

Welcome to GM-free Scotland

About us

Formerly known as the Scottish Consumers Association for Natural Food, Pro-natural Food Scotland was formed in 1996 by a group of concerned people in Glasgow, Scotland. We are funded entirely by donation and run by volunteers. We network with, and support, all like-minded groups and individuals. Our objective is to empower by raising awareness.